A consolidated view of the content within different data
repositories would facilitate useful operations such as
advanced informational discovery. This paper
proposes a methodology and an architecture that uses
semantic annotations to enable such holistic views
across domain specific information sources. The
potential for the personalization of this annotated
information is described, and the future work
necessary to implement the system is elaborated on.

Multi-channel operation in an ad hoc network
can improve robustness and reliability by ef?ciently managing interference and reducing contention. In this paper, we model four dynamic channel assignment techniques under the same set of assumptions, comparing the ef?ciency of their power and channel allocations. As the number of channels increases, the differences in the performance of the four techniques become more pronounced. Among the techniques studied, the con?ict graph-based technique achieves the highest number of feasible links and the lowest average power consumption.

Providers of products and services are faced with the dual challenge of supporting the languages and individual needs of the global customer while also accommodating the increasing relevance of user-generated content. As a
result, the content and localisation industries must now evolve rapidly from manually processing predicable content which arrives in large jobs to the highly
automated processing of streams of fast moving, heterogeneous and unpredictable content. This requires a new generation of digital content management technologies that combine the agile flow of content from
developers to localisers and consumers with the data-driven language technologies needed to handle the volume of content required to feed the demands of global markets. Data-driven technologies such as statistical machine translation, cross-lingual information retrieval, sentiment analysis and automatic speech recognition, all rely on high quality training content, which in turn must be continuall...

he 1,8-naphthalimide sensor 1 was developed as a colorimetric and fluorescent sensor for anions. Being the first example of such anion sensors, where the 3-position of the naphthalimide ring is used to incorporate the anion recognition moiety, in this case a trifluromethyl derived aryl urea moiety, the sensors gave rise to significant changes in both the absorption and the emission spectra, which were both red shifted upon interacting with anions. The changes were most pronounced for fluoride, and to a lesser extent for acetate and hydrogen phosphate, in DMSO, making 1 a highly selective sensor for F?.

Robots have engendered a certain public fascination since the term was
first coined by Josef ?apek in the 1920s [1]. In particular humanoid robots have
the capacity to excite (and in some cases intimidate) the general public about the
future developments in the field. Several researchers have harnessed this interest
in outreach and education activities.
This paper presents the design of a novel modular humanoid robot for
education and outreach. The robot uses a chain drive system actuated by servomotors
to achieve locomotion, while the location of the centre of gravity of the
robot is altered by using a sophisticated weight distribution system in the ?torso?.
The robot has six active degrees of freedom in its legs and one in its torso.
A review of humanoid robots used in education and outreach is presented
before an exposition of the design, realization and testing of the robot. Future
publications will report on the evaluation of the effectiveness of the robot in
outreach activities.

Tactile sensing is commonly viewed as one of the basic forms of sensing [24] ? intelligent life is rarely found without some capacity for tactile sensing ? and it is a fundamental sense in human perception [24, 29]; however it is a sensing modality which few robots currently benefit from. With robotics gradually becoming more dextrous and intelligent, their application areas are expanding from restricted safety enclosures, to being on the production floor next to human co-workers and leading toward increasingly flexible manufacturing, as is already being seen with the recent rise of collaborative robotics in industry. This paper aims to explore how extrinsic tactile sensing can assist in this progress by being a facilitating technology for developing complex Human-Robot Interaction, and the key engineering challenges behind implementing advanced extrinsic tactile sensing.

Traditional manufacturing processes are limited to either being fully automated (CNC machining, robotic packaging, robotic welding systems, etc.), or fully manual (assembly tasks, hand tool operation, etc.), with the automated processes being separated via safety barriers in work cells from the manual processes; however current collaborative robot systems are greying the divide in how human workers and machinery are separated in factories, by offering lower- risk force compliant systems which can reduce or eliminate the requirement for bulky and restrictive guarding. This progress toward guard-less machinery which can operate directly next to human workers opens up not only new ways in which technology can assist human workers; but also how human workers can assist robots.
Although collaborative robotics opens up new environments to operate in, many issues will remain which prevent the use of robots for new tasks, instead of human workers, due to a human?s cognitive capabilities. Hu...

The ability to repeatedly and accurately position robotic end-effectors is a key requirement for modern industrial automation. Parallel developments in domestic and service robotics are opening up exciting possibilities for future manufacturing scenarios that would see robots and humans work far more closely together. These robots will typically be lighter, more mobile, less task specific and far more interactive than typical manufacturing robots of today. Reliable and precise detection of position and orientation in conjunction with the ability to plan and control complex kinematic motions will be vital. Currently, a large variety of sensors exist to measure orientation. The reliability and other attributes of these sensor technologies vary greatly. By using multiple sensors more accurate orientation estimates can be achieved. This paper presents the use of Kalman filters to realise sensor fusion of accelerometer, gyroscope and incremental encoder data. Four Kalman filters are impl...

Modern engineers are expected to be able to work effectively in teams and accreditation criteria (e.g. Engineers Ireland [1], ABET - Accreditation Bureau for Engineering and Technology [2]) typically make explicit reference to these competencies at both an individual and programme level. However, assessment at university has traditionally been performed at the individual level, and many difficulties are regularly noted by engineering educators when trying to manage group projects. These difficulties include equity of marking, balance between individually and collectively assessed components, provision of appropriate levels of guidance and intervention in managing group dynamics, and over- discretization of marking leading to selective targeting by students at the expense of higher order module level learning outcomes.
This work reports on two group-design, project-based modules taught in the author?s institution, and a number of specific strategies that have been put in place to add...

This research study aims to improve personalization in MIR systems, by improving the relevance of multilingual search results with respect to the user and not just the query. The study investigates how to model different aspects of a multilingual search user. Information about users can be demographic information, such as language and country, or information about the user?s search interests. This information can be gathered explicitly by asking the user to supply the required information or implicitly by inferring the information from the user?s search history. The study will then investigate how to exploit the modeled user information to personalize the user?s multilingual search by performing query and result list adaptation. The main research questions that are addressed in this study are: how to improve the relevance of search results with respect to individual users in PMIR and how to construct profiles that represent aspects and interests of a multilingual search user.

Raman microspectroscopy of human sperm cells
and nearfield infrared microscopy of nanoscale biomaterials like
nanografted DNA have been performed. A newly developed
station for the ANKA-IR2 beamline combines several techniques
to study the same sample at the same position.

The in-band OSNR of SP and DP QPSK signals were measured over a range of 10 to 21dB ?1dB using a pair of polarisation independent Michelson fibre interferometers without the requirement for prior knowledge of the signal's coherence properties.

This paper examines effective power management of
users? stationary desktop PCs in a pervasive computing office
environment. The objective being to minimise the building?s
electricity consumption while maintaining acceptable
desktop PC performance.
Current state of the art power management is focused on
developing polices for mobile devices, which are ineffective
for stationary machines. Effective stationary policies need
to obtain context from the user of the machine, but there is
a balance between what detail of context is necessary and
how much this extra context costs both monetarily and energy
wise.
We have implemented two location aware policies which
detect presence of the user?s Bluetooth enabled mobile
phone. Trial results indicate that with these policies it is
possible to get within 8% of optimal energy consumption
with little performance degrade. However, this is the best
case and the results are dependent on the user?s usage patterns
and the geographical layout of the o...

There is an urgent need to develop alternatives to synthetic joint prosthesis to promote the regeneration of diseased osteoarthritic joints. Cell based therapies have shown promise for repairing cartilage and bone; however, existing approaches are designed to repair small focal defects, and are not suitable for treating large injuries or for regenerating osteoarthritic joints. The objective of this thesis was to bioprint cell laden constructs capable of recapitulating key aspects of limb development as implants for large bone defect healing and joint regeneration.
To this end, a novel biofabrication strategy for engineering whole bone organs was first developed by bioprinting hypertrophic cartilage templates with the capacity to undergo endochondral ossification following implantation in vivo. These soft cartilaginous templates could be mechanically reinforced with a network of co-printed polycaprolactone (PCL) microfibers, resulting in a dramatic increase in construct compressive ...

THESIS 96873D object modelling from multiple view images has recently been of
increasing interest in computer vision. Two techniques, Visual Hull
and Photo Hull, have been extensively studied in the hope of developing
3D shape from multiple views. These early methods have the
advantage that they do not require pre-processing procedures such
as feature selection and matching, which fail when images are of low
resolution. One drawback of these two methods is their discrete formulation,
which is demanding of memory and limits the type of optimisation
methods that can be used. This study proposes a continuous
formulation in contrast to the discrete formulations typical of these
earlier methods, and aims to robustly reconstruct the 3D shape and
colour of an object seen in a multi-view system. The use of a continuous
formulation based on kernel density estimates enables us to
define a gradient ascent algorithm (e.g. a mean shift algorithm) to
recover the 3D shape and colour. Moreover...

peer-reviewedWnt signalling is one of the fundamental cell communication systems operating in the embryo and
the collection of 19 Wnt and 10 Frizzled (Fzd) receptor genes (in mouse and human) represent just
part of a complex system to be unravelled. Here we present a spatially comprehensive set of data on
the 3D distribution of Wnt and Fzd gene expression patterns at a carefully selected single stage of
mouse development. Overviews and selected features of the patterns are presented and the full 3D
data set, generated by fully described probes, is available to the research community through the
Edinburgh Mouse Atlas of Gene Expression. In addition to being comprehensive, the data set has
been generated and recorded in a consistent manner to facilitate comparisons between gene
expression patterns with the capacity to generate matching virtual sections from the 3D
representations for specific studies. Expression patterns in the left forelimb were selected for more
detailed compar...

peer-reviewedConfocal microscopes are able to non-invasively capture sub-micron details of fluorescent-labelled specimens at
multiple depths, but there is a lack of applications capable of displaying this collected information in a meaningful
and useful manner. We present a hardware-accelerated volume visualisation application developed for displaying
and exploring confocal fluorescence microscopy data. Programmable graphics hardware is employed to improve
visual quality and aid in highlighting significant properties of the volume, and an adapted marching cubes algorithm
implemented to generate polygonal isosurfaces.

Introduction: For older persons with multimorbidity (PwMs), self-management is a complex process that involves integration
of knowledge and tasks for multiple, and often interacting, chronic diseases (1). Shared decision making (SDM) refers to clinicians working together with patients and/or their caregivers to decide which care plan best fits individual patients and their lives, when there is more than one reasonable option (2). The current study aimed to understand the role of caregiver support related to SDM for older PwMs (aged over 65). The data presented were collected as part of an extensive requirements gathering exercise to inform the design of ProACT, a digital health ecosystem that aims to support self-management and improve integration of care for older PwMs. Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews and focus
groups were conducted with 38 older PwMs,17 informal carers and 22 formal care workers across the Irish and Belgian health
systems. Interviews and focus grou...

Brightness fluctuations in sequences are a typical impairment in archive and modern footage. These fluctuations are mainly temporal but they may also present spatial variations across each individual frame. Current deflicker techniques consider that these variations are smooth but this paper shows that the flicker localisation can be very fine in some cases. This paper presents a deflicker algorithm that is able to handle within a same framework both very smooth spatial variations and very localised variations. The core of the method lies in the parametrisation of the flicker model with only one parameter per pixel. The viability of using such a fine parametrisation is made possible by employing a temporal filtering that effectively separates occlusions from the flicker estimation.